


the wolf and the raven

by boo98 (butter)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Costume Parties & Masquerades, Essentially a Disney movie, Friends to Lovers, Historical Fantasy, M/M, Mistaken Identity, Pining, fairytale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-20 15:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13149642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butter/pseuds/boo98
Summary: The whole thing started, as most things with him tended to, with Soonyoung sitting in a tree that was unadvisedly tall and speaking without thinking first.“We should go to the winter solstice ball.”





	the wolf and the raven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [owl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/owl/gifts).



The clock in the tower at the highest point of the castle, the very tallest tower in the capital city, was chiming midnight as Soonyoung found himself darting through the crowds of people that blocked almost all of the entrance to the royal gardens. On the third chime he was jumping over a particularly low hedge, and on the eighth he had made it out of the front gates of the castle grounds.

On the last chime he was already a good 20 yards away from the castle, weaving through the dark alleyways that wound their way from the section of the city dedicated to royalty and nobility and towards the one that was dedicated largely to drunk, spoiled scholars at the royal university.

Soonyoung managed to lose himself in the sheer number of those very same drunk students by the time he was about ten minutes out from the castle and into his run. The streets around the university campus were loud and full of people out with friends at the various bars and other establishments around the school.

After all, it was the night of the winter solstice. If there was any night to go out on the town, it was this one.

Soonyoung dropped from his run into a brisk walk, still clutching tightly to the thing that he'd been gripping in one fist since he'd left the castle.

He could feel the winter air biting at his exposed fingers and neck, and remembered that he must have left his coat in the bush that he had ditched it in once he had first snuck unto the castle grounds, hours ago at this point. Snowflakes managed to fall in the space between his collar and his neck and sent shivers down his spine.

"Great," he said under his breath, and huffed more at the white cloud of steam that left his mouth, air frozen immediately. "Just another fantastic thing to add to the list of amazing things that happened today."

He stomped past a group of girls spilling out of one of the pubs, all of them laughing in bright peals of giggles that seemed to echo through the thin night air. While on a better night he would grin and wave at them, maybe see if any of them were in his classes, maybe try to tag along to their next bar, this was not that kind of night.

Instead, Soonyoung ducked his head to glance down at what he'd been holding in his left hand, peeling half-numb knuckles back to get a better look.

The glove was made of black leather, smooth and skin-warmed to the touch even though he'd accidentally pulled it off of its owner at least thirty minutes ago by now. It seemed like it was hand-stitched, which was a ridiculous thing to do in this day and age.

He had come to a stop at some point, apparently, but Soonyoung couldn't help but stand like an idiot in the middle of the street, groups of excited university students bustling on either side of him.

Despite the cold, he still felt the burn of a half-ashamed, half-horribly flattered flush that spread from the tops of his cheeks and down his neck.

Because he was, at heart, a kid who had read too many stories about knights in shining armor and terrifying, fire-breathing dragons and princes and princesses who wore lovely clothes and gave their suitors favors to remember them by before they had to go off to war, Soonyoung only hesitated a second before shoving the glove in his trouser pocket and taking off at a sprint.

 

The whole thing started, as most things with him tended to, with Soonyoung sitting in a tree that was unadvisedly tall and speaking without thinking first.

“We should go to the winter solstice ball.”

Wonwoo blinked up at him from underneath the branch Soonyoung was perched on. His eyes were half-obscured by the thick glasses he wore all the time, pale December sunlight glinting off of the lenses as he frowned. “How did you get up there?”

Soonyoung blinked and frowned right back at him. “Pixies. No, I climbed up here, duh. And anyways, you’re missing my point.”

“That we should go to the ball? And you couldn’t have climbed up there, you’re on the lowest branch. Unless you just shimmied up the trunk, which, I guess is possible, but seems stupid even for you.”

Soonyoung couldn’t help but narrow his eyes at Wonwoo. “You know, despite being the top student in our class and the Best Friend of Kwon Soonyoung, you can be really dense. First you doubt my great ideas, and then my climbing skills. What next, is the very fabric of our friendship going to fall apart? You insult me. Get out of my sight.”

Wonwoo blinked again, a little harder this time, and definitely didn’t go anywhere. “You just yelled for me to come over here. For like a solid five minutes. I was studying.”

“Obviously not very hard, or you wouldn’t have noticed. I could just sense you needed a break.” Soonyoung let go of the branch to stretch both hands upwards, and tightened his thighs around it to hold on. Wonwoo still startled and started to move to catch him, as if he would fall. He was a dancer, an athlete, he wasn’t about to fall out of a tree. “And, anyways, you’re ignoring the whole reason I called you over here. We should totally go to the winter solstice ball at the castle.”

“I don’t think we’re invited,” Wonwoo said, and really he could be horribly unimaginative at times. Soonyoung had no idea how, after close to 15 years of friendship, he hadn’t rubbed off on Wonwoo at least a little bit. “That’s, like, for nobles. I don’t think they extend invitations to random university students.”

"Random?" Soonyoung pressed a hand to his chest as if insulted. "You're the class president, and I have made the school newspaper headlines at least twice. His Majesty would be honored with our presence."

That made Wonwoo finally crack a smile, thank goodness. "I don't think the king would want to star of the article 'Student Cracks the Case of the Lavatory Ghost' to be at his big ball, necessarily." He shoved his hands in the pockets of his coat and kept peering up at Soonyoung. "Are you stuck up there? Is that it?"

Soonyoung brushed that off without remark. "Don't you have any sense of adventure? Of mystery, of intrigue?" He tapped his fingers on the dry bark of the branch below him. "We can sneak in, obviously."

"You? Sneaking anywhere? That's funny." Wonwoo had this grin that he did when he was feeling particularly proud of a snarky comment. He was doing it now and making Soonyoung feel like kicking him, if he could reach. "Remember that time when we were trying to get your sister's diary from her bedroom? That went well."

"We were, like, ten," Soonyoung whined, kicking his feet in the air. "And I still say that was you that stepped on the cat's tail. You're like a baby deer sometimes, I swear, you never know where your feet are going."

Wonwoo didn’t respond immediately, just kept looking up at Soonyoung. He was a good seven or eight feet below the branch that Soonyoung was perched on, and from that distance his furrowed brow and dark hair added up to the perfect image of the handsome scholar type. The collar to his overcoat was turned up a little in accordance with the December wind that blew by every now and then, which also served to ruffle his hair against his forehead.

He blinked from behind the thick lenses of his glasses again and the wrinkles between his eyebrows thinned just a bit. "Do you need a ladder? I can go get one."

Soonyoung huffed and his breath puffed out in front of him in a white cloud but, after a moment, he gave in and nodded. "Kind of, yeah. Thanks."

 

When they were about seven years old, Soonyoung had found Wonwoo. That was the way the official story went, or at least the way that Soonyoung liked to tell it.

They had grown up in the countryside all the way to the outskirts of the capital, close enough to still be taxed like the capital city but far enough away that no one he knew had actually been there. The capital city was like some place in a fairytale - magical, and unknowable, and ultimately just so tempting for a dumb, spontaneous kid who thought too much about stories of brave knights fighting dragons.

Soonyoung had been out in the woods that bordered his family's small plot of land, banging tree trunks with a long stick he had found on the ground and immediately adopted as his sword.

"Show yourself, dragon!" Soonyoung had shouted out into the woods. It was summer, and the bugs were buzzing and chirping in the leaves, and everything was green and bright and hot. "You can't hide from me!"

He had been walking further into the woods, towards a small stream he stomped through sometimes even though his mother hated when he came home with his pants all wet up to the knees, when he'd heard the noise.

“Ah hah!” He spun around and brandished the stick at the open air, in the vague direction of where he thought the sound had come from. It had been a little like rustling leaves (or maybe like the sound of scales rubbing against bark, or sharp talons clicking on stone, you never knew). “You’ve been caught, dragon! But, never fear,” Soonyoung continued, lowering the stick enough to tap in on the ground as he approached a thicket of bushes, buzzing slightly with insects taking shade underneath the leaves. “I am a gracious knight, and will allow you to go free if you swear to never harm the people of this land again.”

And with that conclusion to what he thought was one of his better speeches, he held the stick high above his head. “Be gone!”

There was no response, at first, and Soonyoung was already planning the dragon’s comeback in his head when, all of a sudden, there was. “What are you doing?”

Soonyoung later denied that the shriek was him and not some passing bird, but either way he ended up flat on his butt on the ground. "S-Show yourself!" He managed to spit out, and poked the stick at the bushes.

There was another rustling, and then a kid poked his head out of the leaves. He had a twig in his hair and his eyes were squinty behind uneven glasses as he looked Soonyoung over. "Who are you talking to out here?"

"What? I should be asking you the questions. What are you doing in a bush?"

"Reading." The kid waved a book at him, and then crawled out from between the plants to sit on the dirt across from Soonyoung. "It's nicer out here than inside, there's a breeze."

Soonyoung just kind of gaped at him before remembering how to use words. "Do you live around here?"

The kid shrugged. “My grandparents live just down the road,” he said. “I’m staying with them for the summer.” He gave Soonyoung a look. "What about you?"

Soonyoung just jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the vague direction back to his house. "What's your name?"

"Wonwoo."

"How old are you?"

"Eight."

"Hah, I'm nine."

"I turn nine in a week."

"Oh." Soonyoung deflated a little bit at that. "We're the same age, then."

Wonwoo nodded, as if to say 'duh, that's how math works'. Or Soonyoung was reading too much into that, possibly. "What's your name, then?"

"Oh. I'm Kwon Soonyoung."

Wonwoo nodded again, and glanced down at the stick that Soonyoung had dropped to the ground when he'd come crawling out of the bushes. "Cool stick."

"It's a sword."

"Oh. Cool sword."

"Thanks." Soonyoung shot Wonwoo a cautious look. "Do you like knights?"

"Sure, who doesn't?"

That made him start warming up to this bookworm punk a little, admittedly. "Ok, cool. Do you want to be a dragon, or a knight?"

"What does that mean?"

"I can chase you around, or we can go try to save a princess, or something."

Wonwoo gave him a thoughtful look. His hair was a little too long and he kept having to shake it out of his eyes, and his glasses really were dumb. "How'll we find a princess to save?"

Soonyoung grinned and kicked his heels against the ground in excitement. "That's part of the fun! There might be clues we have to solve, or something. C'mon," he said, and hauled himself up off the ground before offering Wonwoo a hand. "Let's find an adventure."

Wonwoo blinked at him from the dirt forest floor before taking his hand and letting Soonyoung pull him up to standing. "Ok."

"Ok, great." Soonyoung smiled wider, the one that made his mom pinch his cheeks and coo, before he thought of something very important. He frowned. "Well, first we gotta get you a sword too."

And that was mostly it, and then they were best friends.

Wonwoo lived in the capital, which was so exciting to Soonyoung that he almost burst with questions the first time Wonwoo mentioned it, but he stayed with his grandparents in the summers when he was released from the boarding school he went to.

“It’s not that exciting,” Wonwoo said once when Soonyoung finally took a breath from reciting the long list of things he had read about boarding schools from his books. “You just have class, and sometimes you have to go to church with everyone. I like being out here much more.”

At that Soonyoung had puffed up a little, proud, and kicked at a root coming off the tree stump he was perched on. “Of course you do, I’m out here!”

Wonwoo had shook his head and grinned at that, but he hadn’t argued the point.

One summer, Wonwoo was the one who would much later suggest that Soonyoung apply to the university in the capital city. "Your grades are good enough," he said, watching Soonyoung pace the floor of the horse stable they were hiding out in. Soonyoung's mom was on a hunt for the both of them to try to get them to help out with hanging the laundry, and neither of them were particularly interested in that use of their afternoon. "You've always wanted to live in the capital, anyways."

"Yeah, but, like, I figure I can always make my riches out here and then show up to the city with a bunch of servants and horses and stuff." Soonyoung stopped pacing finally and swung himself up the ladder and into the hayloft with Wonwoo. “That would be much more impressive, right?”

Wonwoo shot him a disbelieving look. "Make your riches out here? How?"

Soonyoung shrugged and leaned back against the hay pile that Wonwoo had pushed into a makeshift lounge. It was itchy against the back of his neck. "I dunno. I just figured that would happen eventually, you know?"

He shot Wonwoo a sideways grin only to find him looking back at him with one of his too-serious faces on. "What? Don't you have faith in me?"

Wonwoo shook his head but then finally cracked into a smile and settled back into the hay. His arm pressed up against Soonyoung's, which Soonyoung took as a cue to snuggle further into his side. "If anyone could do it, it’s probably you, Kwon Soonyoung.”

Soonyoung preened at that a little bit and folded his hands together to rest them on his stomach. “Thanks, I know.” They fell into silence for a little bit, watching dust motes lazily float through the warm sunlight of the afternoon and up towards the ceiling beams of the barn. “But,” Soonyoung finally said, and felt Wonwoo shift to look at him. “Maybe the whole university thing can be my Plan B.”

There was a pause, and even though Soonyoung was still looking up at the ceiling he could practically feel the way Wonwoo’s gaze went softer and fonder in that moment. “Yeah,” he finally said, and it was through a half-sigh. “Sounds good to me.”

 

The royal university was a small campus situated fairly centrally in the capital city. It was pretty much self-enclosed, with cobblestoned roads that only students and professors really wove their way through on a daily basis.

The largest academic building by far was the library, which sprawled almost a city block wide and was the second-tallest structure in the capital. It was huge, with miles of stacks full of books and documents, and private study rooms peppered throughout.

It was the perfect place for secret plan hatching, Soonyoung had declared, and that was why they found themselves barricaded in one of those study rooms on a Friday evening when everyone else was probably either sleeping or drinking.

“Neither of those options really sounds too bad,” Wonwoo quipped dryly but flipped open a new book anyways. “We have another week until the ball.”

“Yeah, only a week. How easy do you think breaking into a high-security event at the royal palace is going to be?”

Wonwoo paused and glanced up at Soonyoung. “Just to remind you, this was all your idea.”

Soonyoung huffed loudly and buried the lower half of his face in his arms, which were folded on the tabletop next to a pile of newspapers. “Yeah, whatever. I never said it was going to be simple.”

“You kind of did, a little.”

“Well you didn’t have to agree to it, did you?”

Wonwoo shrugged but something fond tugged at the corners of his mouth. It made Soonyoung’s shoulders soften and lower from where they had been hiked up near his ears, just a little. “I guess not. But then who would rescue you when you got thrown into the dungeon for trespassing?”

Soonyoung tipped his head to the side to get a better look at Wonwoo, against the flickering light of the lanterns that reflected in his glasses and made it hard to see his eyes. “Or you just get locked up down there with me.”

Wonwoo rolled his eyes a little but his mouth just curled further into an unwilling smile. “Somehow I always figured that would happen to us, eventually.”

Soonyoung couldn’t help but grin wider, although he directed it down into the fold of his arms and the open newspaper he was leaning on. “You would be horribly bored without me around, just admit it.” He barreled on, spurred by Wonwoo shooting him an unamused look. “Just studying all day and going to bed at 8 each night. You’d probably have gotten a cat by now.”

“Thank god for you, then.” Wonwoo shook his head and looked back at the book he had open. "The chairs in my apartment couldn't stand up to a cat."

"So," Soonyoung said, stealing Wonwoo's pen from his side of the table. "The way I see it, we have a few different things to figure out. First," and he wrote a number 1 in the margin of the newspaper, "breaking and entering."

"Do you even listen to the things you say sometimes?"

"What entrance is the most accessible to the general public? Normally the front entrance is open during advising sessions, but it's very heavily guarded, right?" Soonyoung pointed the pen at Wonwoo. "What entrance would be the least guarded?"

Wonwoo's eyebrows creeped together in thought. "The delivery entrance?"

"Close." Soonyoung scrawled on the newspaper and then pointed triumphantly at the words with the nib of the pen. "The servant's entrance."

Wonwoo adjusted his glasses and pulled a pile of loose blueprints of the castle grounds that they had dug up from somewhere close enough for him to see. "The west one?"

"Yeah." Soonyoung leaned over the table to try to read the blueprints upside-down. "There's the gate, and then you're basically right in the grounds. Once you get into the grounds, that's it. The main inner doors will be open for guests, so you just have to kind of sneak around the side of the castle."

"And not look super suspicious for going through the servant's entrance in a solstice costume."

Soonyoung cursed quietly, and then added a number 2 to the list. "I forgot about that."

"You forgot that?" Wonwoo snorted. "It's a masked ball. I figured the drama of it all was the main reason you wanted to go."

"I didn't forget it was a masquerade," Soonyoung whined, flipping quickly to the advertising section of the newspaper. "I just forgot I would need to _find_ a costume. In all my plans I just kind of showed up wearing one. And I look really handsome."

"Of course you do."

 

Step One: Breaking and Entering

The day after their research session in the library, Soonyoung knocked on Wonwoo's front door for about five minutes before it finally swung open.

"Why are you here?" Wonwoo asked, but was just ignored as Soonyoung burst through the entryway and quickly busied himself with Wonwoo's unnecessarily complicated tea kettle. "Could you at least wipe your boots off? You're getting snow everywhere. It's _dark_ out, am I in hell?"

"Do you really think your best friend ever, of all time, showing up to surprise you and make you breakfast filled with love and positive energy, _without being asked_ , is hell?" Soonyoung tsked and finally managed to pop the kettle lid off. "Where do you keep all your gross, healthy tea?"

"It's not even dawn yet, Soonyoung."

"It's winter, if we waited for dawn to get a start to our day we'd barely get anything done. You need a better organizational system in this place, I thought you were an architecture student."

"Yeah, city planning, not kitchen planning." Wonwoo closed the front door and followed Soonyoung to the small stove in the corner of his single-bedroom, avoiding the wet footprints he had tracked behind. "Why are you up so early?"

"We have a lot of work to do!" Soonyoung finally found an unlabeled tin of tea leaves and set to brewing it. "We're gonna go stake out the castle."

Wonwoo ground immediately to a halt and leveled a look at Soonyoung from across the room. "What?" His hair was uncombed and fluffy from sleep, and he blinked at him with squinted, tired eyes behind his glasses. "No. We're not doing that."

Less than an hour later they were trudging through the thin coat of white snow that covered the cobblestone road, sitting on top of another layer of dirty slush and ice.

"I still say that the second guards start approaching us, I'm running." Wonwoo grumbled behind the thick knit of the scarf he had wrapped around the bottom half of his face.

Soonyoung was almost skipping through the slush. "C'mon, what do you have to lose?"

Wonwoo grunted more underneath his scarf and shoved his hands in his coat pockets grumpily. "Stuff."

They set up shop at a small table outside a cafe just across the street from the servant's entrance to the castle. It was a wrought-iron gate set into grey stone, with a pair of heavily-dressed guards standing on either side of the entrance.

Wonwoo ordered coffee while Soonyoung bundled up under the blankets that the cafe put on the outside chairs, and then they just sat for a while.

"So," Wonwoo finally spoke up, three sips into his coffee. "To point out the obvious, there are guards."

Soonyoung folded his hands under his chin in thought. "Yes. But, the night of the ball, there'll be tons of servants there, right? For food, and decorations, and everything."

Wonwoo glanced over to Soonyoung. "Yes? I guess so."

"So," Soonyoung continued, coffee untouched and steaming lightly into the winter air. "They can't be totally on top of checking everyone's papers. Not while they're upping security around the rest of the castle too."

"Sure, why not."

" _So_ ," Soonyoung slapped his hands onto the tabletop, shaking his cup a little bit in the force and tipping a few drops of coffee down the side of the ceramic. "Slap a coat on over your costume and we can totally slip through there. Then we just ditch the coats in the bushes, or whatever, and sneak around the side and go through the inner entrance into the castle. Skip the RSVP check entirely."

Wonwoo tapped the sides of his coffee cup a few times before shaking his head and letting out an amused breath. "You really thought of everything, huh?"

Soonyoung stretched proudly, tipping back onto just two legs of his chair as he did before coming clunking back down on all four. "I'm pretty insightful. But," he went on, and pulled the scrap of newspaper out of his jacket pocket that he had taken from the library. "We still have tons more to do."

He flattened the paper onto the table and pointed to the next part of the list. "Finish your coffee, keep an eye on the patrol at the servant's entrance, and then we're gonna go pay a visit to the theater department."

Wonwoo stared at him, eyebrows knitting together all over again. "We have to go all the way back to the university?"

 

Step Two: Looking the Part

"So, just to clarify," Jeonghan drawled from behind them as Soonyoung took it upon himself to all but step completely inside the racks of costumes that lined the walls of the theater department studio that they were in. "I'm not getting anything from this agreement at all."

"Free advertising, Jeonghan, is very important to thespians. To artists of all kinds, actually, and I should know." He rifled through a few hanging garment bags before pushing them to the side. "As an artist myself, you know."

"You're not an artist," Jeonghan retorted, voice pitched louder to combat the rustling of tulle and silk as Soonyoung manhandled costume after costume. "You go to the ballroom dance club's meetings maybe once a month and then just show up at their holiday parties and get trashed."

"And provide free entertainment to everyone in attendance. That's the work of a starving artist just waiting for recognition if I've ever heard it." He finally popped back out of the costume rack empty-handed. "Where are you hiding all the good things?"

Wonwoo shook his head and reached over to carefully flatten Soonyoung's hair, where it must have been sticking straight up with static. "You're really going to let Soonyoung just borrow something?"

Jeonghan snorted and pushed the wireframe glasses he had been wearing up to rest on top of his head before crossing his arms mock-angrily. "I know, I'm second-guessing myself too."

"Jeonghannie," Soonyoung whined, rushing forward to grab Jeonghan's hand and swing it in between them. "You wouldn't just leave me completely bereft, would you? I have grand plans and I need a grander costume to be able to get away with them."

"You just went through a whole rack of my ballet costumes, which I got top marks on, by the way, and then asked where I was hiding 'the good things'." Jeonghan pushed Soonyoung's hand away but was grinning anyways. "You're not doing a good job of proving to me how much you deserve stealing my work."

"I'm not going to steal it," Soonyoung defended himself as he followed Jeonghan out of the room and down the hall to a different, dustier studio. "I'll return it good as new, I promise."

"Unless your escape plans go south and you end up having to climb over the castle wall," Wonwoo muttered, and then grunted when Soonyoung jabbed backwards into his stomach for the comment.

The next studio they were led into was packed to the brim with clothing racks when Jeonghan lit the lanterns, and was already way more promising.

"These are all for the spring opera that the theater students are putting on," he explained, leaning with Wonwoo against the door jam and watching warily as Soonyoung pushed through the thick layers of velvet and satin costumes. "Enough time to fix any tears you may encounter, but not enough time to completely replace a costume, so."

"I'm not going to, like, catch it on fire or anything." Soonyoung pulled at the sleeve of one costume, touching the fur-lined cuffs of the jacket reverently. "This is nice."

"Oh, that one?" Jeonghan slid into the center of the room to join him and shoved the costumes on either side of it away until he could pull the whole hanger out of the rack. "You want to wear white? That's brave of you."

Soonyoung pouted violently as Wonwoo fought his way over to them as well. "That is really nice," he said. He looked at Soonyoung with a mixture of approval and surprise. "When did you get any kind of taste in clothing?"

That only made Soonyoung pout more viciously, obviously, and almost earned Wonwoo another elbow to the gut if Jeonghan hadn't interrupted it by unhooking the costume from the rack.

"I may have to cuff the trousers just a bit," Jeonghan noted absently, "but it should fit you fine otherwise." He pulled his glasses back down to perch them on the tip of his nose as he fiddled with the seaming on the shoulders of the jacket. "You're all skin and bones; we can make it work."

It really was a very nice costume, Soonyoung thought to himself as Jeonghan busied himself with taking it off of the rack and going over all the buttons with a careful eye. It was white, a cool-toned white that reminded him of fresh snow, with arctic-grey fur lining the collar and cuffs and silver detailing in the sides of the jacket.

"It's faux fur," Jeonghan explained as he buttoned Soonyoung into the jacket, which hugged his sides more than he had expected. "Meant to look like a grey wolf, but, like, a grey wolf that takes care of his fur and deep conditions and all that."

"I can see that." Soonyoung's nose twitched a little when a stray hair from the collar drifted up, and he rubbed the itch away with a knuckle. "How do I look?"

Jeonghan hummed noncommittally as he brushed the fur of the collar until it lay the way he seemed to want it to and then took a step back, joining Wonwoo. He pushed his wireframe glasses up the bridge of his nose and surveyed Soonyoung so carefully that he kind of wanted to do a little twirl, just because.

Finally, "It works," Jeonghan said, flapping one hand in the air a little, kind of like he was shooing away a fly. "You have the right coloring for it, and it makes your eyes look a little bluer. You should try to find something to grey your hair a little for the actual ball, it's really stark and contrasting right now with all the white."

"Um," Wonwoo said, speaking up for the first time since Jeonghan had shoved Soonyoung into the dressing room. "I think you look nice with your hair the way it is."

Soonyoung and Jeonghan both turned towards him at near the exact same second and Wonwoo bristled visibly, hands going to his pockets. "I mean. It's a good costume."

Wonwoo was horribly awkward sometimes, and Soonyoung absolutely loved it every single time. "You think I look pretty!" he cooed, stepping close enough to pinch Wonwoo's cheeks. It was harder than it used to be - the dude had gotten skinnier in the past year or so, and it made his cheekbones and jawline that much more pronounced. "I'm flattered."

Wonwoo sputtered and batted him away, but not before Soonyoung could see the definite beginnings of an embarrassed flush starting at his ears. "You're awful."

"Nope," Soonyoung said sweetly, tugging at his cuffs, "I'm pretty. You said so yourself, basically."

Jeonghan dusted off Soonyoung's shoulders a little and spoke over Wonwoo's immediate protests that he had said any such thing. "So that's one down. What are we looking for you, then?" He asked, directing the question to Wonwoo even as he was already turning to survey the costume racks again.

"Oh," Wonwoo said, straightening up slightly. "I actually, um, don't need anything."

Soonyoung blinked and turned to look at him. "Huh?"

"I, um, have something I can borrow. From a friend." His ears had gone bright red at this point, and it was creeping down his neck and across his cheeks as Wonwoo straightened his glasses absentmindedly.

"What friend? Do I know them? Why do they just have a masquerade costume sitting around?"

"You don't know them, and, I don't know, they just do." Wonwoo rolled his eyes just a little before pushing Soonyoung's clothes at him, which he had thrown in Wonwoo's direction as he was changing earlier. "Let's just go before Jeonghan changes his mind about letting you borrow this."

"I'm already thinking about it," Jeonghan piped up. "Between the two of you I'm sure you could figure out a way to completely trash this outfit."

 

Step Three: Overcome Road Blocks

The morning of the winter solstice ball, Soonyoung found himself knocking on the front door to Wonwoo's apartment yet again. This time, however, it only took three or four tries before the door came swinging open and Wonwoo leaned out of the doorframe.

And, this time - "You look like complete shit," Soonyoung said before his brain could filter it through any semblance of social cues that he had managed to pick up. "What happened?"

Wonwoo leaned a little harder against the doorframe and let out a breath. "Thanks, Soonyoung." His hair was a mess like it usually was in the mornings, but this time it looked more like he had been running his hands through it all night. His glasses were a little crooked, and he had dark circles under his eyes.

"Isn't that what you wore yesterday? Did you sleep at all?"

Wonwoo glanced blankly down at his shirt and vest. "Not really, no."

Soonyoung stepped forward to try to push into the apartment but Wonwoo didn't move. Instead they just ended up a little too close for comfort, and Soonyoung could more clearly see the purple color of Wonwoo's eyebags, and the way his eyebrows twitched a little when he got closer. "What happened? Are you sick?"

Wonwoo shook his head vaguely, and glanced down the hall past Soonyoung. "I don't think I can go with you tonight."

Soonyoung all but squawked. "What?"

Wonwoo winced at the volume. "I just - something's come up, I have something else I have to do."

"Something else? What's more important than this? We worked for _days_ on this plan, it's one of our biggest adventures yet!"

"Bigger than the one summer when we made that treehouse and you broke your arm?"

"Yeah, of course!" Soonyoung crossed his arms indignantly in front of his chest. "Don't try to distract me, you complete bully. You're just going to abandon me on this?"

Wonwoo sighed again, sounding tired and strung-out. "My dad came back into town last night."

That punched Soonyoung's gut, just a little, with a sudden rush of anxious anticipation. "Oh. Were you - expecting him?"

"No." Wonwoo rubbed the side of his jaw absently. Soonyoung noticed, with half-paid attention, a rough spot on his chin where he had missed shaving. "It was a surprise, to say the least."

Soonyoung had never met Wonwoo's parents. The most he knew was that his mom had passed away at some point when he was a kid, before they met, and was most of the reason he always stayed with her parents over the summers.

Soonyoung had always felt a little bitterly grateful for it, for having had a reason to meet Wonwoo in the first place, and beyond her apparent love for reading and family tradition for near-sightedness he didn't know much else about her.

Wonwoo's dad was, if possible, even more mysterious. Wonwoo didn't talk about him much, and he seemed to constantly be out of the city, if not the country, on business - not that Soonyoung ever figured out what exactly he did.

Hearing he was in town suddenly made Wonwoo's shaken appearance make some sort of sense, at least.

"So... No ball, then?"

Wonwoo shrugged and finally looked back at Soonyoung. "You understand, right?"

Soonyoung didn't, not entirely, because Wonwoo was a nice guy but clammed up the second anyone mentioned anything about his parents, but Soonyoung wasn't about to hold that against him. "Yeah, I guess."

That made Wonwoo's shoulders soften, just a little, into a slightly less-tense line, and he let out a breath he must have been holding. "I'll see you on Monday in class, then," he said, and before Soonyoung could properly reply he was slipping back inside and closing the door.

In the end, all Soonyoung could do was blink at the wood grain of the door and feel a little bit like he just got sucker-punched.

After just a moment he huffed, burrowed a little more into his coat, and spun on a dime to head back outside. "Sometimes," he mutters into his scarf, "Our hero has to strike out on his journey without his trusty sidekick."

 

The night of the winter solstice ball was cool and clear, with an icy tinge of storm in the air that suggested snow in the near future.

Soonyoung could not have been more thrilled.

The threat of snow meant that the back gates of the castle’s servants’ entrance were pushed open, so that they wouldn’t get blocked by later flurries and turned impassable, and there was a small contingent of workers smoking by the entrance and talking in low voices.

Soonyoung, coat collar gripped tight around his throat, made his way towards them in a manner that he thought was actually very casual and smooth, thank you.

When he was close enough to be able to be seen with the flickering light of the torches posted on the outer wall he ducked closer to the tail end of a group of younger women, all chattering about the excitement of the ball, and tipped his head down as they all walked through the gate.

There was a brief moment where he was sure that the one guard who was still posted by the entrance would say something to him, but in the end all Soonyoung did was nod carefully at him and walk on by. The guard blinked, nodded, and turned gruffly away to watch the street outside the gate.

Soonyoung barely managed to keep from pumping his fist in success. Instead he kept his head low and followed the women further into the courtyard until he was far enough away from the closest wall sconce to duck into the darkness.

The courtyard between the exterior walled gates and the actual entrance to the castle itself was thin and sparse out here in the rear of the building, but as Soonyoung slipped around the side of the castle and got closer to the main entrance it widened into lush gardens.

Pine trees lined the exterior wall, and thick hedges lined the pathway. There was the occasional wooden gazebo standing sentry, and Soonyoung took the opportunity to shove his coat into the bushes next to one of them as he passed by.

Coatless now, he scrambled to tie his mask on without a mirror to actually be able to see what he was doing. The mask itself was white to match his costume, made quickly by Jeonghan at some point in the last few days, although you couldn't have been able to tell.

Soonyoung certainly couldn't, at least. Oh well, these nobles were all going to be varying stages of drunk, probably. They wouldn't be able to tell either.

He managed to get the ribbon knotted at the back of his head and adjusted the edges of the mask until he thought it was most likely straight. It was a pretty simple half-mask, with delicate vines stitched up the sides in white thread that was only really visible when the light caught it the right way.

Jeonghan had complimented his own work no less than four times before Soonyoung had managed to finally slip out of his workshop and make his way to the castle, but he guessed it was deserved.

He adjusted the fur cuffs of his sleeves and then the furred collar of his jacket before giving up and continuing towards the entrance. The closer he got the louder it seemed, and soon enough he was slipping past other costumed people who had already taken to the frigid gardens to try to get some air.

Just like he thought, no one was guarding the inner door to the castle. It was packed with people, at this point, and there would have been no way of controlling that. A quick glance over to the exterior gate showed a bevy of guards and what looked like administrative-level servants admitting guests as they got off of their carriages.

None of them gave even a first look over at Soonyoung as he squeezed past a woman in a huge bell-shaped gown and into the entranceway of the castle.

He ended up getting pushed along in the current of people all streaming through the door at the same time, and before he realized it he was stepping out into the main royal ballroom.

Soonyoung paused in the doorway, causing the people behind him to tut and step around either side of him to try to get in the room. He had to stand and stare for a second, though, and curse silently but enthusiastically in his head.

The ballroom was decorated in shades of white, evergreen, and gold that made Soonyoung acutely aware of how much he seemed to, bizarrely, fit right in with his costume. The room itself was built from marble that seemed threaded with lines of dark grey and gold, with metallic gold accents in the crown molding and the pillars that surrounded the circular floor.

Dark, velvety-green bolts of cloth were strung from the ceiling, all surrounding a huge chandelier that was lit with electric lights - not the first ones he had ever seen in his life, but certainly the largest and most all in one place.

At some point Soonyoung realized his mouth was hanging open, and he shut it quickly.

There were people _everywhere_ , all in deep jewel tones and bright, richly-dyed fabrics and jewelry. A woman wearing a pair of costume fairy wings pushed past him, giggling brightly and dragging another woman in a dark suit with the glitter of silver embellishments at the cuffs after her. It was like everywhere Soonyoung turned was a different scene from a lavishly-written fairy tale.

"Wonwoo would've loved this," he found himself muttering under his breath as he finally moved away from the entrance to the ballroom and towards the side of the huge dance floor, skirting the majority of the crowds by sticking to the side of the room.

Eventually he picked a spot to stand at the edge of the dance floor, next to one of the marble and gold pillars that was wrapped with some thick greenery that smelled like fresh pine and scratched Soonyoung's shoulder when he accidentally bumped too close.

He got handed a flute of champagne by a manservant in a tuxedo and a mask studded with small white jewels, and lord knows that was right up his alley.

"No party is that bad when they get you a drink within five minutes," he observed lowly to himself as he watched the couples on the dance floor spin. Soonyoung was clearly losing his mind, being alone for once - no Wonwoo to make his random outbursts of thought at least appear like they were directed at a living audience.

He leaned against the pillar, more careful of the greenery this time, and sipped his champagne as he surveyed the scene.

It wasn't like he was lonely, really. He was an adult, for the most part, so he could function on his own just fine.

But, either way, it was weird, was the thing. Soonyoung had gotten used to Wonwoo being right there for all of the dumb things he put his mind to doing throughout almost all of his life. Now that they were in the same city for the entire year they lived in each other's pockets even more - half of the weekends Soonyoung spent on Wonwoo's sofa, or even shoved halfway onto his bed, stealing the quilts.

And they had planned this _together_. Sure, it had been Soonyoung's idea, and Wonwoo had been weirdly reticent about it from the beginning, but this was the grandest adventure they'd ever been on - it was supposed to be the two of them. Soonyoung would have been able to drink a little too much and Wonwoo would have been there to keep him from stealing some earl's top hat or something.

It would have been perfect.

Instead, it was Soonyoung steaming quietly into a half-empty glass of nice champagne and watching couples dance.

He found himself vaguely keeping time and tempo of the music that an orchestra stationed somewhere above them was playing, some light waltz that floated through the room easily despite the din of conversation from hundreds, probably thousands of people.

Damn it. If he was going to be stuck here by himself with a thousand nobles that he would never see again, he might as well spend the night dancing instead of standing like a loser in the corner.

Once he decided on that it was like Soonyoung was on a mission. He scanned the edges of the room and finished his champagne, and he was just contemplating where he could maybe get another glass when he spotted his target.

Across the room, not directly opposite but more to the right, also lingering on the outskirts of the crowds, was a man in a costume. Well, Soonyoung thought to himself, snagging another flute off a passing tray, that was kind of a moot point, but it was true.

He was in all black - sharply pressed black trousers over shined shoes and a black waistcoat under a black jacket that fit perfectly, even from this far away. His mask was the same style as the one Soonyoung was wearing - black, although more form-fitting to the curves of his face, as if it was bespoke.

It probably was. Goodness knows the amounts of money that the people who (legally) came to this thing had.

Soonyoung swigged some champagne and inched a little closer, round-about-ways on the edge of the dance floor.

As he got just a bit closer he was able to pick out more details of the man's outfit, starting with the slight purple sheen to his jacket when he turned a certain way and caught the light of the chandelier. There were accents of black feathers at the breast of the jacket and patterned up into the collar, and decorating the edges of his mask. His hair was pushed off his forehead and styled to the side, and he was wearing a pair of what looked like black leather gloves.

He also looked horribly, horribly bored. Soonyoung couldn't wait to ask him to waltz.

"Good evening!" The man almost jumped when Soonyoung addressed him, and he turned to look at Soonyoung with a twist of a frown on his face. Soonyoung had never been deterred by that kind of thing, though, so he pressed forward. "It's lovely in here, isn't it?"

There was a long pause. The music of the orchestra swelled into a brief crescendo, the strings of the violins vibrating through the air as the man regarded Soonyoung with clear, dark eyes from behind his mask. He was holding a drink glass that looked completely untouched, as if he had gotten antsy and just needed something to hold. He looked, vaguely, panicked.

Finally, he tipped his head in the barest suggestion of a nod. "It is."

Soonyoung had to lean a little closer to be able to hear him properly - his voice was low and a little gravely, like he'd been smoking or yelling or something just a few minutes ago, and the music was pitching louder as the song came to an eventual end.

The man's eyes widened just a hair when Soonyoung leaned towards him, and his shoulders stiffened almost imperceptibly from underneath his jacket.

He was kind of precious, black leather and all. "Would you like to dance?" Soonyoung barreled on, tipping his head towards the dance floor. "I came alone, and I’d love some company.”

There was another pause, and Soonyoung would have been insulted if he wasn’t thoroughly delighted with how shaken the man looked. He wondered, absently, just how high up he was in the ranks of the nobility. He had been left alone, rather than surrounded by a pool of adoring subjects and peers, so it couldn’t be that high.

The man blinked, and straightened his posture just an inch more. “Of course,” he finally said, “I’d be honored.”

Soonyoung grinned, the wide, happy one that made his cheeks puff out and turned his eyes into half-moons. He couldn’t help it – dancing was maybe the one thing that could save this sorry excuse for a party, now that he didn’t have a Wonwoo to drag along behind him. “Great. Finish your drink, they’re starting the next song soon.”

The orchestra was setting into the introduction of the next waltz, all sweeping bows and clear, ringing sound as Soonyoung pulled the man onto the dance floor. They had to fight to move between a few small crowds of dancing couples, and eventually found an empty pocket towards the middle.

Soonyoung spun to face the other man and took a moment to be, just slightly, surprised at how handsome he was. He hadn’t noticed before, he supposed, but he really did look like he fit right in amongst the rest of the nobility. His eyes were a warm brown, made warmer in contrast to the black of his mask, and he had nice shoulders.

Then the moment was over, and Soonyoung went to take his hands before pausing. “Um. I don’t know, do you usually lead?”

The man blinked, still looking a little struck by all of this. “I, uh. I don’t really dance that much.”

Soonyoung nodded and tugged one of the man’s gloved hands to rest on his shoulder, taking the other in his and pulling it to the side of him. “Great,” he said, and slapped his free hand on the man’s waist. “I’m fantastic at leading.”

They danced for the first song, Soonyoung ambitious and whirling them maybe a little too widely throughout the crowd. The man wasn’t a bad dancer, necessarily – he seemed like the type who got formal lessons when he was a kid, and was just kind of rusty. He picked it up quickly enough, and Soonyoung only stepped on his feet once or twice.

The second song was a little quicker, a little more like the folk songs they played back in the countryside at barn-raisings and their new year parties. At one point Soonyoung got daring and tried to dip the other man a little, and almost dropped him completely, but the man surprised him by just laughing and scrabbling to stand back up.

“It was worth a shot,” he said, smiling wide and dorky at Soonyoung, who couldn’t help but grin right back at him. “Someone more graceful would probably have managed to do that a bit better than me.”

Soonyoung snorted and shook his head, continuing the step that he had started up before the attempted dip. “You’re not that bad, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just need to oil those joints a little.”

“It’s not like I’m wearing a suit of armor,” the man quipped back, mouth tipping sardonically up and fingers tapping absently on Soonyoung’s shoulder.

“No,” Soonyoung said, “But that would have been an amazing costume.”

“Maybe a little heavy.”

Soonyoung hummed thoughtfully and peered up at the man. “It would just take true dedication to the concept.”

The man huffed out a laugh. “Maybe next year.”

The song dipped and changed into something softer and slower, and Soonyoung took the chance to slow their dancing in turn until he could focus on his thoughts a bit more clearly. “Right, next year.” He glanced past the man to peer out at the other dancing couples on the floor. “Not your first time here, then?”

The man stumbled for a second but then picked up the step again. “Um, well. I haven’t been since I was a kid, really.”

Soonyoung tipped his head back to look at the man, who seemed a little caught and tense, suddenly.

“I used to always come with my father,” he continued, eyes darting from Soonyoung to the floor and back. “But this is the first time I’ve been since I was maybe fourteen.”

Soonyoung nodded, as if it made sense to him, and slowed them to a stop. “How’s it holding up to the past ones? I’ve never, um, been able to make it to this ball before.”

The man tilted his head to the side, just a degree, as if thinking. At the same time, he carefully brushed a thumb over the fur at Soonyoung’s collar, and the motion made something shivery and thrilling run through Soonyoung’s gut. “It’s going pretty well so far, I think.”

After three more songs Soonyoung finally let the other man beg his way into a break, and followed behind him out of the ballroom and towards the courtyard that he had snuck his way through probably an hour ago, now.

As they were walking the man slipped an arm around Soonyoung to press lightly and carefully to the fabric of his jacket where it fell over the small of his back. It made Soonyoung feel bubbly, as if he had swallowed too much champagne at once.

It was probably too-familiar of him, but Soonyoung couldn’t bring himself to mind.

They ducked between the crowds of people until they were outside. This side of the castle was actually opposite to where Soonyoung had snuck around, he realized, and it was a neat mirror to the other side.

They had paused in the entranceway, looking out over the courtyard. It was dark, and the moon hung blue-white and crescent-shaped in the night sky. The snow had finally started to fall, flakes occasional but thick and heavy in the air.

One snowflake managed to land smack dab in Soonyoung’s eye as he looked up at the moon, and he sputtered very inelegantly as he wiped the wetness away.

When he finally managed to rub his eyes dry he blinked to find the man in the mask decorated with raven feathers looking at him. He seemed like he was coming to some very important decision – his mouth was twisted to the side, a little, and his mask covered the line of his eyebrows but Soonyoung could see the hints of wrinkles between his brows.

His hands were slipped into the pockets of his trousers, ruining the elegant line of his costume suit but otherwise making his posture something casual and, almost, familiar.

Soonyoung blinked again, lashes wet. They were closer than he had thought, initially.

The man opened his mouth, paused as if rethinking what he was going to say, and then continued. “Why’d you ask me to dance with you?”

That took Soonyoung just a little by surprise, to say the least. He recovered quickly though, and responded. “You looked bored, and I wanted to dance with _someone_. I got kind of stood up, you see,” he continued, sheepishly twisting his hands together – it was cold out here, especially without his coat that was currently stuffed in a bush somewhere. “My original guest wasn’t able to make it.”

Soonyoung could see the bob of the man’s throat as he swallowed, and it was distracting enough that he almost missed his reply. “That’s too bad for your guest, then,” he said. His voice was low and quiet in the sudden silence of the courtyard – they seemed to be the only two out here on this side of the building. “He’s missing a wonderful dance partner.”

Soonyoung snorted and looked off into the courtyard. “I’m sure he’s doing something way more interesting. He’s not a big dancer, anyways.”

The man frowned, hands still in his pockets. “More interesting than a royal ball?”

“He’s never been big on parties, anyways,” Soonyoung dismissed, flapping a hand. “I think he just comes along to amuse me.”

“He seems like a good friend, then,” the man replied, tone warmly edging towards joking. “Even though he abandoned you tonight.”

Soonyoung leaned against the chilled stone of the arched entranceway and thought about that a little. “He is,” he said, and crossed his arms so he could tuck his hands in by his sides to try to warm them. “He likes to act like he’s all serious and smart, and I guess he is, but he’s a good guy, you know? Funny, and stuff. I think his dad just sucks, honestly.”

The man in the raven mask twitched at that, and moved a half-step closer. “His dad?”

“Yeah. Whenever he comes in town he’s always in an awful mood.” Soonyoung watched snow gather on the garden hedges that lined the pathways that wound through the courtyard. “I’ve never met the guy, but he just always ruins things.”

There was a deep pause, before the other man spoke again. “I’m sure he has his reasons,” he said, and there was something catching in his voice that made Soonyoung look back up at him. “It’s hard to understand other people’s family, sometimes.”

“Yeah. I guess.” Soonyoung shook his head, trying to rid himself of some of the funk that had crept in on the sides of his mind like a fog. “Thanks, anyways, for humoring me. For dancing with me,” he clarified, and smiled at the man in the raven mask.

The man smiled back, shyly, and he really was horribly handsome, even with the mask in the way of Soonyoung properly seeing his face. There was just something about the light of his eyes and the tilt of his smile that had Soonyoung reeling, a little.

“I was honored,” the man says, as Soonyoung feels his cheeks reddening for reasons probably other than the chill of the air. “It was certainly a more interesting evening than I thought it would be.”

Soonyoung preened at that, a little, and smoothed over the fur at his collar a little. “Well thank you, mysterious stranger,” he said, “I take that as a compliment.”

The man’s smile turned a little sour and he opened his mouth to say something. Before he could, though, Soonyoung’s attention was grabbed by a burst of color hanging just at the top of the arch of the entryway.

“Oh.” He pointed up, and the man followed the line of his finger obediently. “Look at that.”

The little bundle of mistletoe stood starkly out against the dark stone of the archway, all waxy green leaves and berries as red as Soonyoung’s cheeks felt.

He looked back down and the man in the raven mask looked back at him. There was a weird, shivery moment in the air between them – it felt like snow that had a layer of ice frozen over it, and when you stepped in it there was just a moment of solidity before the ice snapped and your foot sunk into the snow.

Soonyoung felt much more warm than he probably should have, considering the snow that was now falling even heavier than before.

The man was looking at him with a stare that was suddenly heavy, and wide-eyed. Soonyoung watched him swallow, again, throat bobbing behind the precise knot of his tie. Then, he spoke again.

“Is it awfully presumptuous,” he said, low and hushed as if the moment would shatter like an icicle falling to the ground. “If I wanted to kiss you, right now?”

Soonyoung mirrored his swallow, because his mouth was suddenly dry as a desert. “I did spring the whole dancing question on you pretty suddenly,” he said, and felt himself tipping just an inch forward despite himself. “So I figure you get a turn now to be presumptuous, too.”

He wasn’t sure why – he didn’t go around kissing mysterious strangers a lot. He didn’t really go around kissing anybody, really, but there was something warm and easy and familiar about this man.

And there was something about the mask and costume he was wearing that made it just that much easier to hover in a little, tiny bit closer.

The man smiled, a twitch of a movement, took the sides of Soonyoung’s face in hands that were warmed through the leather gloves that he had on, and kissed him.

It felt like the ending to a perfectly-spun fairytale. Soonyoung felt his hands go to the man’s waist again, just like when they were dancing earlier but this time he clung a little tighter.

He felt like a furnace, warm against Soonyoung’s front as he pressed up and in to deepen the kiss. It was dizzying, a little, and his stomach hadn’t stopped dropping yet – it was a wonder that it still had further down to go.

The man was cradling his face like something precious, and dear, which should have maybe rung an uncertain bell in Soonyoung’s mind but he was far too busy with trying to push in even closer to notice. He kissed carefully, like someone trying to put together a puzzle made of thin glass that could break at any moment.

He kissed like someone who didn’t kiss people often, but when he did he put his mind very deliberately towards it.

He kissed with an air of serious reverence and a twitch to his fingertips and the press of body heat to Soonyoung’s chest that suddenly threw him back to the memories of being high in the hay loft of a barn with his best friend, sitting with legs thrown over each other’s and reading adventure novels.

“It’s not a proper romance if they don’t kiss at the end of the story,” Soonyoung remembers whining as he tossed his latest book down to join the small pile of paperbacks that built up in their makeshift hideaway. They were maybe sixteen – young and a bit stupid but with high expectations for life.

Wonwoo had sighed, pretending to be put-upon, and flipped the page in the book he was reading. “Romance doesn’t end with the first kiss,” he said, in the tone of voice he got whenever he was saying something that he probably had learned in his stuffy boarding school. “It doesn’t have to start there, either. It could be there in the background for ages, before they even kiss at all.”

Soonyoung pouted and leaned on Wonwoo’s shoulder to peek at his book. “Isn’t it frustrating, though, if there isn’t that payoff?”

Wonwoo had twitched but hadn’t moved him off. “I guess. I don’t know. I forget how much of a romantic you are, sometimes.”

Soonyoung grumbled but had ignored the comment, for the most part. He wasn’t a romantic. He just knew how these stories were supposed to go – the brave knight fought the dragon, rescued the princess (or prince, he was adding these days), and they fell in love. That always included a kiss.

He hadn’t voiced any of this at the time, though. He just smashed his cheek into Wonwoo’s shoulder until he was comfortable, and then read along with him for the rest of the afternoon.

Wonwoo always seemed to know just when he was done with the page. He never flipped them before he was ready.

Soonyoung pulled back from the kiss in a half-breathed gasp, breath forming in white clouds around his mouth.

The man in the raven mask blinked at him, looking startled and awed and – Soonyoung couldn’t finish the thought.

Instead he was thinking stupidly, desperately, of Wonwoo alone with his dad in some horrible, boring business meeting or something. Waiting for him to come back from the ball with wonderful tales of adventure and intrigue.

Not of Soonyoung kissing a random, if handsome, man whose most attractive qualities so far were now reminding him sickly of Wonwoo.

He was shaking a little with cold and adrenaline when he went to push the man’s hands off of his face, and he managed to snag the loose tip of one of the fingers of his gloves as he did.

“I, um,” Soonyoung stuttered, feeling both horrible and flattered at the fact that the man seemed completely frozen in place as he backed up into the open courtyard. He had accidentally pulled the glove off in his haste to move, but he just gripped it in his fist and kept walking backwards. “It was nice to meet you, I’m sorry, I’m an absolute fuck-up – thanks for dancing with me, I have to go.”

And with that he spun around and tore off to the main entrance from the castle grounds that lead into the street of the city. Above him, the clock tower that he hadn’t actually heard yet that night suddenly rung out the first low chime to signal midnight.

 

Step Four: Debrief

Soonyoung didn’t sleep that night – obviously. Instead he busted into his tiny apartment at about one in the morning, changed quickly into his own clothes, and set to making a list.

Lists were usually more Wonwoo’s thing than his, but he had found himself picking up the habit lately.

He had to push a bunch of half-written papers and old library books off his desk to really be able to set into writing the list, but it had to be done. There was shit he had to figure out.

“So,” he breathed into the still air of his room. “What’s so great about Wonwoo?”

That seemed like a stupid question, voicing it out loud like that. There was lots of stuff that was great about Wonwoo – putting it to paper almost felt like cheapening it, somehow.

He ignored the feeling, and tried anyways.

  1. Smart, so he can help me with studying. The best grade I got in university so far was that one classics class we had together.
  2. He goes along with most of the plans I make, no matter how dumb they are.



_Most_ of the plans rung sourly in the mood of the evening, but Soonyoung continued on.

  1. His jokes suck, in the best way.
  2. He lets me borrow his pens when I forget to bring one to lectures.



He chewed the end of one of those very same pens for a second before continuing.

  1. He’s handsome, I guess. Obviously.



A crowd of students in the street outside his apartment swelled into shouts and laughter all of a sudden, and Soonyoung snapped out of his funk just enough to blink down at the brief, mostly awful list he had managed to scrawl down on the scrap of paper he had pulled out of his book bag.

His lips were still buzzing faintly from the kiss from what felt like hours ago, and he pressed his fingertips to his mouth to try to calm the feeling. He still felt slightly overheated and flattered from the attention, but now it mixed sickly with an anxious guilt.

He thought, vaguely, of kissing Wonwoo instead, and almost snapped the pen in half from the somersault his stomach did at the notion.

Well. He should probably go see Wonwoo tomorrow.

Soonyoung was never one for avoiding conflicts.

The sky was a dim grey, before any proper sunrise, when Soonyoung shoved the costume and mask into a bag to (eventually) return to Jeonghan’s studio.

He paused for a moment to look at the glove that he had somehow carried with him back from the ball. Now that he had a moment to look closer, it was absolutely hand-sewn and probably made personally for the man he had inadvertently stolen them from.

The stitching was even if imperfectly human, and there was a tiny stitched circle at the center of the cuff, which would have sat right at the bottom side of the man’s wrist.

Inside the circle was a tiny, delicately-sewn letter J.

 

Step Five: Confrontation

“I know you’re in there!” Soonyoung had almost lost count of how many times in just the last month he had found himself knocking on Wonwoo’s apartment door. He really should invest in a doorbell, or something. “C’mon, let me in, I need to talk to you.”

He was just about to give up on the door and try rappelling up the side of his building instead when it finally creaked open, hinge whining in the cold air.

Soonyoung perked up and bounced onto his toes. “Hey! How was everything, how was your dad, what’s going on? You look dead again,” he continued, mind sputtering words out of his mouth without second-guessing what he was saying. “At least I had a very good reason to not sleep last night, what’s yours?”

Wonwoo was staring at him with all the shock of someone who was seeing a ghost, not even blinking behind the thick lenses of his glasses. He clutched the doorframe with a hand and shook his head a little, hair flopping softly over his forehead. “What… what are you doing here?”

“I have _things_ to tell you! Stories to weave, confessions to make.” Soonyoung shoved his way into Wonwoo’s apartment, ignoring his punched-out ‘What?’ as he went. “We simply can’t wait. You didn’t answer my question, though, what happened with your dad?”

Soonyoung had had a few hours to recuperate from all of the sudden life realizations he had been making lately, so he was much more ready to try to piece together Wonwoo’s expressions as he perched on the arm of his sofa. Like that one – nervousness coupled with hesitancy, all with the cherry on top that was his ears starting to go red.

“My dad’s fine,” Wonwoo said carefully, shutting the door but not moving any further into the room. “He’s only here for a few weeks, like I thought.”

“Great, cool, but what did you have to do last night? You,” Soonyoung continued, and wagged a finger at him with confidence that he wasn’t entirely convinced he had, “Missed quite the ball.”

Wonwoo stepped forward just enough to lean against his kitchen table with one hip, crossing his arms. “I’m sure,” he said, tone cautious. “You had a good time, then?”

Soonyoung nodded and looked to the side so he wouldn’t have to notice how cute Wonwoo looked all sleep-tousled, dark circles and all. “Yeah, mostly.” He tapped his fingers against his knees as he peered at the dish that Wonwoo kept his keys and random coins in, sitting on the low table in front of his sofa. “Would’ve probably been more interesting with you there.”

There was a shuffling sound from where Wonwoo was standing, although Soonyoung didn’t look up at the sound. He was too busy trying to pick apart the different knickknacks and nonsense that Wonwoo kept in that bowl – he really had to organize things eventually.

“Well, um, I’m sorry, that I couldn’t be there.”

Soonyoung shrugged absently, eyebrows furrowing as he slid off the arm of the sofa and onto the cushions. “’S fine, I get it.” He reached forward to tug the dish closer to him by the lip of the glass. “You have so much stuff in this thing, you need to – “

His voice died in his throat. There were only so many things that could properly silence Kwon Soonyoung, but Major Plot Twists had always been one of those things.

Among the keyring and loose change, dried-out pens and ticket stubs that were littering the bottom of the dish, sat a single black leather glove.

Wonwoo may have said something as Soonyoung reached out to pick up the glove, but it was drowned out by the rushing of blood in his ears.

The glove was cool in the air of the apartment, but it was buttery-soft and warmed quickly with his body heat.

Soonyoung carefully turned it over, stomach swooping. Stitched on the underside of the cuff was a small circle, and a cursive ‘J’ inside.

A dragon could have probably flown right past the apartment window at that moment and he wouldn’t have noticed.

“Where did you get this?”

Wonwoo must have stepped forward at some point, because his voice was closer than Soonyoung would’ve thought when he replied. “They were my fathers’,” he said, voice low and clicking easily into place all of a sudden in the back of Soonyoung’s mind. “But he gave them to me when I mentioned I needed a costume for the ball.”

“Jeon Wonwoo.” Soonyoung felt like he was falling and just waiting for the floor to hit him, but it hadn’t happened yet. “Right, obviously. And he would just have a costume sitting around.”

Wonwoo shuffled another step forward, hovering on the edges of Soonyoung’s peripheral. “I never really wanted to tell you what he did for a living,” he said, hushed in the suddenly still air of the apartment. “I didn’t lie, exactly, but… I didn’t want it to be weird.”

“Because none of this has been weird at all up to this point.” Soonyoung could tell his voice was turning a little hysterical as he spun to face Wonwoo, but he couldn’t help it. “It’s all been super normal. What does he do?”

Wonwoo had turned pale as paper, and he rubbed the back of his neck as his eyes skittered down to the ground. “He’s a duke. Of one of the smaller provinces,” he was quick to continue, as if that revelation alone hadn’t totally rocked Soonyoung’s world. “We’re really barely nobility at all, it’s mostly all on paper. Sometimes he has to bring me along to these kind of things, though, to make a show that he has a proper successor.”

“These kinds of things?” Soonyoung was gripping the glove too tightly as he watched Wonwoo avoid his eyes. “Were you acting dumb the entire time? Just pretending you didn’t know anything about the ball?”

“No,” Wonwoo said quickly, and looked up at him finally. “I really hadn’t gone since I was 14, like I told you, and I didn’t think I was supposed to be going at all until my dad sent a message the night before the actual ball. I was looking forward to going with you,” he added at the end, ears flushing darker.

Soonyoung blinked, then pointed a finger accusingly at him. “You knew it was me,” he said, ends of the words going a little shaky. “But you just let me act stupid. You really weren’t going to clue me in at all. You danced with me – you _kissed_ me,” he tacked on, as if it was an afterthought when really that was all that had been looping through his brain since he saw the glove on the table. “And you weren’t going to say anything.”

Wonwoo looked a little like a rabbit caught in a snare. “I… I wasn’t planning on seeing you at all,” he said after a second of stunned silence. “I thought there was no way I would run into you, there are thousands of people that go to the ball. And by the time I realized you didn’t know it was me it was, I don’t know, too late?”

Soonyoung stood up at that, and Wonwoo raised his hands to hang in the air between them. “You’ve known me since we were eight,” Wonwoo continued.

“ _I_ was nine,” Soonyoung couldn’t help but interject. It was an old argument, and the point was familiar enough to say easily, without thinking.

That familiarity seemed to register to Wonwoo too, and his posture softened just a bit. “Right. Nine.” He scratched the back of his neck with one hand. “But, you know. You know me better than anyone else. It made it kind of… nice, to be able to be someone different for a few hours.”

The sentiment echoed somewhat familiar with Soonyoung, and he remembered the sort of blind bravery he had felt wearing the mask and rocking up to meet the man in the raven mask’s kiss.

Wonwoo’s kiss.

Oh.

“How long,” Soonyoung asked, gripping onto the edge of this idea like a man holding onto the crumbling ledge of a cliff, “Have you wanted to be presumptuous, Jeon Wonwoo?”

It was thrilling to be able to see the way Wonwoo’s expression went from confusion, to realization, to flushed and a little bright-eyed, barely hopeful. “You’re mad though, right?” he ventured to ask, stiffening when Soonyoung stepped a little closer to him. “I wouldn’t blame you, I’ve been kind of lying by omission for the entire time we’ve known each other.”

Soonyoung hummed and reached up to push Wonwoo’s hair off his forehead. Wonwoo twitched, but otherwise let Soonyoung have his way until he had it parted just like it had been last night. A little light in color and softer-looking – he must have had wax or something in it for the ball, he mused, and then wiggled Wonwoo’s glasses by the corner of the frame.

“Were you not blind? What did you do without these things?”

Wonwoo blinked behind the thick glass. “There are these lenses you can put right on the surface of your eyes. My father thinks that glasses are a sign of weakness of character.”

Soonyoung tsked and dropped his hands to clasp them behind his back. “Well I figure my vote counts more, if you weight it by the amount of time I actually spend with you. And I like them.” He tilted his head to the side a degree. “You didn’t answer my question yet, though.”

Wonwoo looked absolutely flabbergasted at this point, and it was kind of amazing. He looked like he did when Soonyoung first declared that they would go to the winter solstice ball, like the man in the raven mask had looked when Soonyoung asked him to dance. It was thrilling, and honestly, how had Soonyoung been so stupid?

Oh well. A story was no fun if the protagonist knew the ending from the very start of the book.

Soonyoung gave Wonwoo his very sweetest expression and that finally made Wonwoo crack. He snorted and shook his head, and when he looked back at Soonyoung his eyes were that very same warm brown that they had been behind the raven mask, taking in his dance partner.

“When we were nine – sorry, when I was nine and you were ten, I decided I wanted to marry you.”

Soonyoung made a very inelegant sound and thwapped Wonwoo on the chest with his palm. “Shut up, what are you talking about?”

Wonwoo laughed harder but kept going. “I did! You were so interesting and exciting and I had never had anyone pay as much attention to me as you did. I always wanted to write to you when I had to go back to school,” he continued, ducking his head shyly, “but I wimped out of it most of the time.”

He shrugged, awkward and endearing. “I didn’t really realize that kissing you was an option until later. I figured it was just kind of a dream, though, I guess.”

“You guess?” Soonyoung was, as usual, talking without thinking first. “You’re so handsome, and funny, and smart, though? And apparently, like, wealthy? Obviously I would have wanted to kiss you. I do,” he continued, a little sobered by the quick look Wonwoo gave him. “I do want to kiss you. Still. I guess. And not because of the whole wealthy thing. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that.”

Wonwoo shook his hair back down to cover his forehead, and the smile he gave Soonyoung was stickily sweet and fond, like warm caramel. “It’s alright, um. What should we do, then?”

“Well,” Soonyoung started, stepping a little closer and reaching out to pinch at the wool cardigan Wonwoo had pulled on, probably hurriedly. “I figure the eventual next step is living happily ever after. But first – “ He tugged on Wonwoo’s cardigan enough to yank him stumbling forward a step, although he caught himself before he ran full into Soonyoung. “Kissing sounds like a good idea.”

Their official first kiss had been wonderful and magical but uncertain as the last snow in the late winter, close to melting away any second.

Their second kiss was warm and comfortable and sure. It was like homemade cookies and stepping into a fire-lit wooden cabin. Wonwoo’s hair was soft and un-styled when Soonyoung pushed his fingers through it, and his glasses dug awkwardly into Soonyoung’s cheeks.

Soonyoung was horribly glad that this story wasn’t going to end after just the first kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> My rhhb secret santa gift to the darling kait!!! I hope you like it, my official first foray not only into writing soonwoo but into writing wonwoo literally at all. It's horribly sweet and romantic and very cliche Hallmark movie but it's for you!
> 
> Thanks soooo much to all of rhhb for being amazing and supportive and putting up with my grandma self, I adore you all!
> 
> Say hi at my [twitter](https://twitter.com/ponyoprince), especially if you like gay shenanigans!


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